1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an optical member, a method of manufacturing the optical member, and a backlight assembly having the optical member. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to an optical member disposed on light sources, a method of manufacturing the optical member, and a backlight assembly having the optical member.
2. Description of the Related Art
A flat panel display device such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) device generally requires a backlight device providing a display panel of the flat panel display device with light. The backlight device is disposed under the display panel.
The backlight device is classified as either an edge-type backlight device or a direct-type backlight device according to the position of a light source, such as a lamp, employed in the backlight device. In the direct-type backlight device, a plurality of lamps is disposed directly under the display panel. Therefore, since a large amount of light is provided to the display panel by the direct-type backlight device, the direct-type backlight device is generally employed in a large display device.
Nowadays, flat panel display devices are required to be thin. In order to manufacture a thin flat panel display device, the thickness of a backlight device has to be small. However, the lamps and an optical member, such as a diffusing plate, may need to be separated from each other by more than a minimum distance to improve the brightness uniformity of light from the backlight device.
Techniques for reducing the distance between the light source and the optical member without reducing the brightness or the brightness uniformity have been developed. Examples include an optical member having improved light-diffusing capacity and light-concentrating capacity and an optical member having multiple functions.
When the distance between the lamps and the optical member decreases or when a distance between adjacent lamps employed in the backlight assembly increases, a brightness difference between positions of the optical member directly on the lamps and positions of the optical member between the lamps may be increased. That is, bright regions may be generated at the positions of the optical member directly on the lamps and dark regions may be generated at the positions of the optical member between the lamps. The bright and dark regions may be, for example, linear.
In order to prevent the bright regions and the dark regions from being generated, a prism sheet may be disposed on the optical member. However, although the prism sheet is disposed on the optical member, the bright regions and the dark regions may still be generated. In addition, prisms of the prism sheet for concentrating the light may reflect a portion of the light perpendicularly incident upon the prism sheet so that the light passing through the prism sheet may form dark lines directly on the lamps.